Saturday, 16 Nov 2024

U.S. stocks rebound following rout, bond yields edge down

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) -U.S. shares rebounded on Thursday after falling for three consecutive days and benchmark Treasury yields edged lower as investors snapped up technology stocks and shrugged off worries over rising prices, for now.

FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange is pictured amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 16, 2021. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

By early morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.5%, the S&P 500 was up 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.3%.

Yields on 10-year Treasuries, which had climbed 7 basis points overnight in the biggest daily rise in two months, edged lower in early trade to stand at 1.6744%.

“We’re certainly oversold here, so remember our 5-percent maxim: buy every S&P 500 down 5 percent close after the first one,” said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

Against a basket of major peers, the dollar was steady at 90.695, holding gains eked out on Wednesday when the greenback strengthened on data that showed U.S. faster-than-expected acceleration of inflation in April. [USD/]

Before Thursday’s recovery in U.S. stocks, world stock markets were spiraling toward their worst week of the year as the rise in U.S. inflation worried bond markets and as red-hot metals, crop and cryptocurrency prices all suffered sudden stops.

Asia took a pounding overnight, London’s FTSE was down 2% before lunch, bond, commodity and U.S. futures markets were all deep in the red and Elon Musk and Tesla were no longer accepting bitcoin. [.EU][.N][MET/]

While there were plenty of idiosyncrasies, the overarching worry was that rising inflation pressure in the United States might force the Federal Reserve to start turning off its cheap money that has been driving markets rapidly higher.

“Inflation pressures are going to be rising, and they’re not going to be temporary,” said Jeremy Gatto, investment manager at Unigestion. “What does that mean? Effectively that (interest) rates will be rising.”

Oil prices fell on Thursday despite a sharp drop in U.S. crude inventories, as market participants took profits following days of buying spurred by a cold snap in the largest U.S. energy-producing state.

Brent crude fell 2.4% 2020, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 2.6%.

For the cryptonites, there was a ray of light as bitcoin steadied at $50,407 after a 13% drop when Elon Musk said Tesla would stop accepting it as payment because of the amount of fossil fuels that go into bitcoin “mining.”

Bitcoin is created by high-powered computers competing against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles. At current rates the process is estimated to devour about the same amount of energy annually as the Netherlands did in 2019.

Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, gained 1% to $3,852.43.

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